User talk:BenArmston
Welcome Hi Ben. Fritzophrenic and I have been hoping that someone would join in on the featured tip page, so thanks! Please consider joining the mailing list as above because we would welcome more opinions. You might like to create [[User:BenArmston|'your user page']] (can be very simple, perhaps just say how long you've used Vim – see for some ideas). You are welcome to put any to-do or other notes related to Vim or the wiki under your user page. --JohnBeckett 09:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC) ---- Hi Fritzophrenic, (I'm going to assume that you will see my reply here, still learning my way around the wiki) as you may have guessed by the length of time it has taken me to respond to your message, I probably wont have much opportunity to help with the featured tip page but will do what I can. At least I've found time to create my user page though :-) Ben Armston Merging tips Hi Ben. With all the recent great improvements, I'm beginning to hope that the wiki really will get cleaned! You just merged VimTip183 to VimTip686 (thanks!). That's good -- don't change it. In general however, we try to merge from the higher number to the lower number. That's to acknowledge that the first tip was first with the idea. This is a very weak policy, and exceptions are fine (e.g. if the first tip is not very helpful, or whatever), so don't worry about it. I just want you to be aware of what I usually try to do. --JohnBeckett 00:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC) :Hi John. I must admit that I was aware of the rule but decided to break it. There are at least half a dozen tips on buffer switching that should be merged into one tip and I chose the one with the title which would make the most sense for the combined tip. I presume that there is a way to change the title of a tip, but I don't know what it is. I shall bear in mind what you say in the future.--BenArmston 00:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC) ::Bold is good! You're right that a good reason to avoid the first tip would be if it had a dodgy name. There is a (rough) guide on renaming tips. I suggest going slow on renaming because there are a large number of tips with dodgy titles, and renaming can cause a fair bit of confusion, particularly if you rename to X, and later someone else renames to Y. ::In the past we had a major renaming project where several of us spent a long time discussing how to improve titles for 578 tips. It greatly improved the wiki. I don't think there's much need for that again, but unless you have a really clear idea of what a new name should be, I suggest adding a comment to a tip (or my talk page) saying "I think this should be renamed to xxx". A few days later, if no disagreement, someone can do it. --JohnBeckett 02:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC) New tips I need some help with the new tips for May and the new tips for June. Dealing with the new tips is a dirty job, but an important one! In particular, on the May new tips, I need some opinions on the three tips marked "Note 1" (in the table at the top of the page). The first of these is no problem, because its author has agreed that it should be deleted. However, for the reasons explained on the page, I don't want to keep the other two the way they are. It would be helpful if you were to consider the matter and add a comment. Agree or disagree is fine (of course, a brief reason would be good). If you get more time, you might add a comment on each new tip where there is not yet any consensus (no one has commented, or only one person has expressed an opinion, or two people disagree). Thanks! --JohnBeckett 00:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC) :I'll take a look at these and comment on them as soon as I get chance. Hopefully tomorrow.--BenArmston 00:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC) Clarify May new tips In our discussion about Less.bat in May new tips you wrote: :The inclusion on Vim scripts should be sufficient for someone who is looking for this functionality, so I see little point in keeping it as it is. If it isn't changed by the end of July, I suggest option 3. Would you please edit your comment (on the new tips page, not here) to clarify your intention. Your words sound like you want option 2 (delete the tip), but you said option 3 (keep the tip with a 'todo', and rename). Thanks. --JohnBeckett 05:55, 1 August 2008 (UTC) Easier buffer switching This tip is looking seriously good following your work and some recent stuff I've done. I merged in the comments, but have some remarks intended for you, so I've put them here. *I'm glad you liked it, and thanks for making some progress with it. I was wondering when the opportunity and the desire to continue this were going to coincide again ;-) --BenArmston 00:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC) You asked about the '/' in this mapping: :nmap zl :ls!:buf / I can't see it documented anywhere, but experiment suggests that the '/' sometimes works to find a buffer by name. I think its cleverness is that if you have a buffer named "123" (i.e. a number), the command :buf /123 will switch to that buffer, while :buf 123 will give an error because you don't have buffer number 123. However, the '/' gave me trouble in a quick test (it often wouldn't match part of a name), and I don't think it is worth bothering with. When you remove the '/', the mapping is too similar to your mapping, so I have deleted the suggestion. *Thanks for the explanation. It's prompted a bit of trial and error from myself and /123 will match any buffers starting with 123 whilst /*123 will match any buffers which contain 123 somewhere in their name. And of course /*12*buckle_my_shoe matches as expected. This is probably a useful addition to the tip. What do you think? --BenArmston 00:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC) **I don't think so. I can't quite remember what the problem was, but I'm sure I found some simple cases where using /xxx claimed there was no matching buffer, but in fact there was. In fact, just deleting the '/' and trying again showed that the buffer did exist. You can use '*' without the '/'. --JohnBeckett 03:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC) ***You seem to have a stronger preference on the matter than I do, so we'll leave it out. --BenArmston 21:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC) I suggest we omit the :wn, :wp, :last, :first commands (that you merged in from tip 412) because they refer to the argument list (and tip 686 is sufficiently complex without explaining that). We can't cover everything. --JohnBeckett 02:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC) *I'm suprised that these are for the argument list; I learn something new every day. I agree that these don't belong in this tip. --BenArmston 00:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)